Thursday, July 25, 2013

Take An Amazing Magical Adventure with Cathy Young

Cathy Young was a good friend and co-worker of mine when we both worked at the Academy of
Natural Sciences. Cathy Young had worked in the Membership Department and she was
in charge of activities for all the members. I was the manager in the Changing
Exhibit Hall and the Birthday Party Coordinator and I also did the Diorama tours up until I retired a few years ago.

Before Cathy left the Academy to start up her own business, she ran the activities for the members and their
families on weekends. She would often ask me to help her with the events by
taking the members on a Diorama Tour. After I did the tour, where the members
learned about the animals featured in each diorama, the families would
return to Cathy for a diorama featured arts and craft project. Sometimes, Cathy would arrange
a behind the scene tour of the Academy's collections. The members, led by one of the Academy
Scientists, would get to visit some of the close to 20 million specimens housed
in the Academy’s research portion of the building.

But, the best part of the year was when Cathy took the members on a fossil hunt near Monmouth N.J. Plus, in June, she would organize a weekend camping trip to Delaware. You
haven’t lived until you’ve tried to locate frogs by their sound;
in the dark.

Or, helped the Wildlife Rangers to count the horseshoe crabs that were
coming out of the water to lay their eggs in the sand. This was an activity
that ran into the early morning hours. It was exhausting, but exciting to know that our group was
helping to keep a record of the number of horseshoe coming onto the beach. Those eggs are is vital to the survival of many migrating
shorebirds. One such shorebird travels thousands of miles and without the horseshoe crab's eggs will go extinct, yes, I'm talking about the RED KNOT.

Cathy Young is now running her own Nature Adventures called Mid Atlantic Fossil and Nature Adventures, LLC. Some of
the trips are close to the tri-state area and some further away. Most of the
trips are family centered and reasonably priced.

My ghost hunting friends and I are signing up for the Philadelphia Minerals Trip, but you can check out the listing for other trips, here.

Philadelphia
Minerals Trip

Saturday, August
31st, 2013

Join us for a day of
rock hunting. Yes – even Philadelphia has wonderful rocks! We will meet at
Valley Green in Fairmount Park, and see and learn about metamorphic rocks and
collect some interesting minerals. Karenne Snow, past president of the
Philadelphia Mineralogical Society and co-author of Gem Trails of
Pennsylvania andNew Jersey, will lead this extraordinary trip.
We’ll collect garnets, and possibly staurolite and kyanite, while taking a
beautiful hike in the woods. Karenne will also teach us about the geology of
the area. We’ll have a picnic lunch by the stream, and then go to the Bells
Mills area to look for more staurolite, tourmaline, and perhaps magnetite.

Yes, my little zombie snacks, it’s not only ghosts that I
hunt for; I also love fossils. Check out Cathy’s site and make sure to say
hello to me. I’ll be wearing my zombie shirt.